Monthly Archives: November 2011

So collaboration within our dev team has bought us less waste, smarter developers and more fun. But what about outside our dev team? Isn’t there an opportunity for these benefits to spread? Requests for help outside our day-to-day development usually come via email. Now I’m not a big fan of emails. I sit and stare at them […]

I was rightly pulled up by David Anderson, author of the authoritative “KANBAN, Successful Evolutionary Change For Your Technology Business” for the following tweet #Scrum and #Kanban are just 2 of many seeds for self organisation and continuous improvement. If you feed them with #XP they'll flourish — Tom Howlett (@diaryofscrum) November 14, 2011 His point was […]

Scrum really was the tipping point in our attempt to become agile. Taking responsibility for what we deliver increased trust between the team and management. Trust gave us a significant amount of autonomy, and as we all now know it’s self direction that really motivates us. From my point of view as Scrummaster the most important thing […]

Before our days of Scrum decisions were made behind closed doors. Not knowing what went on in these meetings infuriated me. For anyone who cares about the work they do having decisions about that work made for them belittles the contribution they make and sends a clear message that your opinion isn’t valued. Perhaps it’s […]

Agile practices require mindfulness. Anxiety, competition, panic, and pressure cause people to abandon any scientific methods and become reactive. Lizard brains take over and progress is lost. I’ve watched smart managers destroy productive self organising teams too many times. Quality is replaced by a “just get it done” as they revert to an energy sapping command […]